Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10553/16929

DC Field

Value

Language

dc.contributor.author

Herrera-Ulibarri, Alicia

en_US

dc.contributor.author

Asensio Elvira, María Teresa

en_US

dc.contributor.author

Martínez, Ico

en_US

dc.contributor.author

Packard, Theodore T.

en_US

dc.contributor.author

Gómez, May

en_US

dc.date.accessioned

2016-05-10T10:33:51Z

dc.date.accessioned

2018-06-15T09:24:17Z

-

dc.date.available

2016-05-10T10:33:51Z

dc.date.available

2018-06-15T09:24:17Z

-

dc.date.issued

2016

en_US

dc.identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10553/16929

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dc.description.abstract

Small pieces of plastic are accumulating in the oceans. Because they are smaller than 5 mm they are called microplastics. They are produced by many different processes of
degradation and fragmentation, and can be found washed up on every beach of the world ocean. Recently their size is getting smaller and their abundance increasing. A
recent evaluation finds five trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons floating at sea. However, these values are 10 orders of magnitude lower than the total plastic debris
dumped into the sea since 1970. Thus, a significant portion of plastic waste has disappeared and one likely cause is ingestion by marine zooplankton and subsequent
transfer up the marine food web. There, they pose a biohazard because microplastics absorb persistent organic pollutants (POP’s), including polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCB’s) that, via marine fisheries, get transferred to people. Once in people’s bodies, these POPs can penetrate cells, chemically interact with important biomolecules, and
disrupt the endocrine system. Because of this danger, it is imperative to estimate microplastic ingestion and egestion rates in zooplankton. Here at the University of Las
Palmas on Gran Canaria in the MICROTROPHIC Project, we are determining microplastic abundance and temporal variability. In laboratory cultures of zooplankton, we are determining the ingestion and egestion rates of microplastics. In mesocosm experiments we are investigating microplastic transfer through the food chain and we are studying the relationship between the ingestion of microplastics contaminated with PCBs, and the concentration of PCBs in animals tissues